


I've Been Known to Bite

by Webtrinsic



Category: Herbert West - Reanimator - H. P. Lovecraft, Re-Animator (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Werewolf, Anger, Blue Moon, Dan is a werewolf, Fear, God Complex, Guilt, Herbert West Being Creepy (Re-Animator), Herbert has feelings, M/M, Melancholy, Men Crying, Naked Dan, Possessive Behavior, Sad Daniel Cain, Selene means moon, Self-Indulgent, Unhealthy Relationships, Werewolves, Worry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-18
Updated: 2020-10-18
Packaged: 2021-03-08 18:02:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,074
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27080890
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Webtrinsic/pseuds/Webtrinsic
Summary: Herbert West's roommate Daniel Cain happens to suffer from lycanthropy. This greatly effects their relationship.HAPPY 35TH ANNIVERSARY RE-ANIMATOR!!
Relationships: Daniel Cain/Herbert West
Comments: 2
Kudos: 21





	I've Been Known to Bite

**Author's Note:**

  * For [second lancaster (neenlancaster)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/neenlancaster/gifts).



> based on the song "I know I'm a wolf" honestly just been loving werewolves lately and felt like why not?  
> not my fav thing I've written but i needed to write something lol  
> idk i do and don't like this but I'm sure it'll grow on meeee

He’s in the business of reanimating corpses, there isn’t much that surprised him anymore. At least in the same way a walking corpse would surprise anyone else. But Herbert West is genuinely, pleasantly, surprised when his assistant/roommate reveals, albeit unintentionally, he suffers from lycanthropy. 

Dan had come in at dawn through the back door, naked and covered in claw marks, his torn clothes held in his grasp saving little of his modesty.  His eyes had been wild and unfocused, dazed to the point he hadn’t even noticed Herbert in the kitchen as he trudged through the house and up the stairs leaving a trail of blood in his wake.  Blood riverted over his skin, nothing life threatening, and Herbert normally would have intervened at this point at the sight of his assistant hurt. Aware that a hurt assistant wasn’t particularly as useful, but he couldn’t bring himself to do anything more than gawk.

Whether it be because the sight of his...friend’s toned physique successfully garroted him, or his confusion for this encounter overwhelmed his overtaxed brain, Herbert automatically shut the left open door, too many questions willing themselves to the forefront of his mind.

A switch flips in his head and his feet are moving, trailing after the spilled blood all the way to Dan’s door, it’s not fully closed and he takes it as a invitation the same way he normally would even when it was closed.

His assistant is on the ground, back leaned against the bed, his blanket toweled around him protectively. It’s a sight similar to when he’d gone into shock, Herbert sincerely hopes Dan's just as pliant now as he was then. 

The scientist is lucky Dan keeps a first aid kit on his dresser (The reasoning for this much more clear now) as he plucks it up and moves to crouch in front of his friend. The worn doctor is staring through him until he isn’t, eyes flashing a glimmering gold that is a far cry from their normally august warmth.  His teeth are pointed, canines animalistic as he lets out a legitimate growl when Herbert steps closer to inspect the damage.

Herbert falls less than gracefully onto his ass, scooting back until he is pressed to the wall. Dan doesn’t make any move to go after him. Panting not unlike a beast as his eyes droop in fatigue.  The gold slowly fades, his teeth receding back into his sauve yet somehow painfully innocent smile before his shoulders are slumping and his body is teetering.

Herbert’s still trying to connect the dots as he approaches yet again, Dan’s reception to this stumbling feat more human than whatever it had been before.  He is limp and graspable, something short of lifelessness that doesn’t equate to death. The doctor's body falls into Herbert’s arms, shivering and silently weeping into the crook of the smaller man’s neck as Herbert’s cramped digits trace the knots of his spine through the all too thin blanket.

“It’s alright,” Herbert fumbles, not the best at giving assurance but there is the tiniest huff of an amused breath that Dan lets out against his collarbone before more tears spring out against his lapels. Meaning that the assurance did something.

It’s noisy opening up the first kit, so noisy they both wince as it clicks open and Herbert struggles to tear open the disinfecting wipes with his arms still partially around Dan. And then he's running the cloth over the available lacerated skin before he is forced to unfurl his friend from his blanket shield and attend to the rest.

Dan has checked out to the point of slumber. His nerves seemingly nonexistent but also overcharged. He flinches but not always and Herbert can’t truly focus on why that is while he’s still blinking frantically in hopes that his own lethargy was the cause of his friends sudden animal like qualities.

_ What had happened? _

Herbert doesn’t get an answer, not as Daniel woke if only for a moment to pull him close before practically collapsing on top of him. He couldn’t do anything more than sleep then, the man’s weight was more effective than a pendulum.

* * *

They’re at the dining room table, Dan’s curled into himself in a way that’s reminiscent of a child being scorned by a parent, whilst Herbert bores a hole into the floor with his pacing.  A werewolf, his assistant was the creature of the night. A helpless follower of the moon. Something in the same category as the technical zombies he was reanimating.

For a moment when Dan had explained, Herbert had been under the impression he was being fictitious. But no, Dan has been all too truthful, his fear and conviction written across his face as clear as day.  Herbert knew Dan was a man with a heart, and normally like the rest, the fact they reanimated the dead would have sent anyone else with a heart as big as his fleeing. Not Dan though.  Not Dan who was still taken aback, but Dan had accepted it all too easily after. Processed it in a way that Herbert should have realized meant Dan had dealt with big blows before.

Herbert West was still hellbent on reanimating the dead, but he knew he’d do that. Would, even or especially if it killed him, but when he did, his next pursuit would be there. Waiting at his side.  Dan the werewolf would be there. 

“The moon was so strong last night,” The words come out in a tremble because Dan is still shivering, wan and sullen. _Terrified._

Herbert knew there’d been a blue moon that night, one of the nurses had been blabbering about it for a week and tried as he might to tune her out. That fact had stuck itself into his cerebral cortex just waiting to dig deeper into his mind.  It did now, with a heavy shovel as Dan pulled the couch’s quilt tighter around his shoulders. 

“How?” Is really all Herbert can get out as he recalls every story he’s ever read as a child of the shapeshifters compelled by Selene.

Tears silently drip down Dan’s face, picking at their table as the words spew with layers of emotions that Herbert can feel physically.

“There was a patient, homeless man brought in at the start of my internship. He had a raging fever...we weren’t quite sure what was causing it. He hadn’t wanted to be there, he-he was so afraid. We almost had to restrain him. He screamed and screamed and I swear for a minute I saw his eyes shift, I was so distracted I couldn’t even stop him from biting into my arm. He hit vein, and I felt it. Venom or whatever the hell was in him. They sent me home-“ he’s hyperventilating and Herbert already knows what comes next.

Knows that when he got home the moon rose and Dan became one with the night. 

“They told me he broke out not a few minutes after biting me, a good thing too. I doubt him transforming in a hospital would have been safe,” that part is said in a wheezing deprecating monotone.  His unruly hair shifts under his fingers before he’s standing, moving to go anywhere else to escape the memories and this conversation all together.

Herbert allows it, brings up water and food, and draws the man’s curtains as he hides in his bed for the rest of the day.

Heading down into the basement, the scientist finds an old incomplete journal before tearing out the old outdated work and writing down some new notes. The re-agent could wait until tomorrow. He needed Dan’s help with what he had in mind next anyway, and the good doctor wasn’t in any position to be of help for the time being. 

* * *

It’s an indisputable fact that Herbert wasn't the best roommate, he’s negligent, always working odd hours, and does little in terms of housework. But it is the exact reason it had taken him so long to realize his roommate was never home on nights when a full moon permeated the sky. 

Their dynamic was shifting, Dan’s lycanthropy opening doors and pulling down walls between them that had started off taller than their heads.  Herbert found himself reading about the cosmos and moon cycles when he had the time, even pondering the potential of getting his hands on a telescope.

He also found himself…doting for lack of a better word. Nothing extreme, just leaving a pair of clothes by the door or a robe (he didn’t always and he tried to pass it off as an oversight and not a reason to stare at Dan’s unclothed form) and set out some nutrients both on the table and in Dan’s room when he knew a full moon would strike.

In turn Dan had stopped holding back, not that Herbert had been aware he ever truly was, Dan had always been quick to defend but he’d grown down right protective when the burden of Selene was most pressing.  Stalking Herbert around as if he were prey, standing taller than he normally ever did, herding him into taking care of himself. 

It was not only incredibly annoying but also affirming. It was hard for a person like him (one with a god complex) to not enjoy the way his assistant had become so inclined towards him.  Least to say their relationship became pleasurable. 

* * *

It isn’t in his nature to be frightened, yet Herbert is as Dan who shouldn’t be so imposing wearing a robe that barely covers anything, roars.

“You went outside and tried to get me while I was a werewolf Herbert! I could have killed you! I could have torn you apart to the point the reagent couldn’t even reanimate what was left. I would have eaten you alive,” Dan’s never been so coherent after a shift. His body is a beaten drum and his skin is stretched thin, none of that matters more than the love of his life’s stupidity.

“No, I should have fucking known you’d do something like this! You have no concern for your safety. Herbert do you know what it would do to me if I came back to myself and felt you between my teeth? Do you know how much it would break me to have to clean up whatever’s left of you?” 

Dan’s strength and adrenaline is fading, and it hits him all at once. He falls unconscious and Herbert struggles to understand or even fathom how Dan’s words had struck him in his rarely used heart.

He doesn’t regret the fact he wanted to seek out information, he regrets how his pursuit has hurt Dan.

* * *

It’s likely guilt that has Dan be the one to apologize, it should have been Herbert. It almost always should be Herbert. Yet it’s Dan who is nervously rubbing the back of his neck, explaining his emotions and feelings are always amuck after a night of being transformed and that he’d overreacted, when Herbert knows he truly hadn’t.

It hadn’t been his smartest move chasing after a werewolf with not even a way to protect himself, and no syringe filled with reagent on his person (not even a fully functional one).

The apology isn’t the only thing Dan does, there’s a dog crate down in the basement with three iguanas. How he got his hands on them Herbert doesn’t know or truly care. 

Dan watches the scientist inspect their three new subjects with clouded eyes. He loves him and he can’t bare to lose him, but Herbert is a losing battle, he can see it in his eyes.

* * *

Instead of seeking the beast out, Herbert grabs Dan’s robe and moves to try something different this time.

More often than not there were some truth to old fairy tales, if he is wrong he’ll likely end up dead with no way to apologize, but Herbert is sure for some reason now that this will happen the way he hopes it will.

“Danny,” the small scientist calls from the back porch, the moon is still out and bright but lowering. Pounding footfalls approach, and he is calm against the snarling brown mass of an animal in front of him.

“Come home,” his hand is extending and a paw slowly slides into it. It turns into the hand he’d initially upon their meeting refused to shake with a sickening crack.

“I’m here,”

**Author's Note:**

> Snap: allisonw1122  
> Tumblr/twitter: webtrinsic1122  
> Insta:Webtrinsic


End file.
